Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Arif Hasan's All 22: Why the Vikings defense stinks

Vikings fans who frequent the blogosphere are probably well aware of the writing talents of Arif Hasan. A featured Vikings blogger for the Bleacher Report, The Daily Norseman, and Cover 32 (you can also follow him on twitter @ArifHasanDN), Arif has gained a large following with posts inspired by watching loads of Vikings All-22 tape and attention to statistical detail. This week, Kick Ass Blog has been lucky enough to cajole Monsieur Hasan to write something for us. And the topic is an important one. Arif investigates why the Minnesota defense has been such garbage in 2013.Take it away, Arif.

The Vikings have one of the worst quarterbacks to start for
them in the NFL, no matter how you slice it. And yet, it’s not the problem.

A defense that gives up 2.3 points per drive has no excuse,
even if the offense hasn’t been setting it up to do well. Regardless of field
position, the Vikings defense is the second-worst team in the league when it comes to
preventing first downs and touchdowns, as evidenced by Football Outsiders’
Drive Success Rate statistic. The Vikings defense has broken down spectacularly, and seems
to be able to neither defend the pass nor the run. It’s difficult to pinpoint
the cause, even after extensively combing over the All-22.

After isolating some of the most impactful defensive
failures the Vikings have given up, per Advanced NFL Stats’ WPA calculations,
there are a multitude of problems, and it’s not easy to isolate one single
issue. I looked at 20 plays, here are a few that will isolate the cornucopia
of issues well enough.

Play #1

The first play is familiar: the Martellus Bennett touchdown to
seal the game for Chicago, thrown against Chris Cook for an easy-ish win.The call on the field was good, despite the fact that the
Bears ran a Cover-2 beater. Had the coverage rotated properly, Cook wouldn’t
have been left on an island against two receivers and forced to pick his poison
(he picked correctly, by the way). On the other side, Brandon Marshall and Earl Bennett get
open, meaning Jay Cutler actually threw the third-hardest pass on the play to
win the game. The issue here is that the split of Martellus Bennett from
the line of scrimmage automatically led to a coverage check to change the Cover-1/Cover-3
call to a Cover-2 call from the same formation.

Josh Robinson, naturally, blew his shot at man coverage,
but it was against Brandon Marshall.

Play #2

The next play is painful, but a reminder that the Vikings
are poorly equipped to deal with running backs who display “agility” and
“speed.”

It’s pretty clear to see that the play wasn’t at fault here;
it’s a simple Cover-2 man, with a press concept at the top. Chad Greenway’s
assignment was Reggie Bush, who cut him out of the play before he even got the
ball. Later, terrible tackling angles from Jamarca Sanford (most
notably) and Harrison Smithallow Bush
free reign. As a side note, it wasn’t his responsibility, but it was a
reason he was drafted, so it is depressing that a player as fast as Josh Robinson
couldn’t catch up to anybody, much less a fast-but-not-quite-as-fast Reggie
Bush.

The fault here lies with the agility of the linebacker, not
in play recognition or defensive call. It is true that a zone defense would
have been better equipped to deal with that particular pass, but the Lions
actually ran a play designed to stress Harrison Smith and make him choose
between three options. Man coverage is the best way to deal with that issue, so
it was a generally good call. There is not much to say here, except that Greenway didn’t
just take the wrong angle, he simply didn’t have the physical ability to cover
Bush.

Play #3 Here’s another example of the Lions hurting the Vikings - this time with Nate Burleson.

It wasn’t a touchdown, but it was close enough and a turning
point in the game. It’s a fairly routine play, but it’s in a high-leverage
situation in what should be a win for the Vikings - their top corner against a
middling wide receiver. The playcall is Cover-1 Robber, which is designed to do two
things: 1) confuse the coverage read for the quarterback 2) allow a
free-wheeling zone defender to undercut routes and break on the ball without
having to worry about whether or not he has help, because he does. Generally speaking, it will take routes away from the middle
and force quarterbacks to hit riskier reads. The best way to attack the Robber
is with outside routes that work with a timing element, which is exactly what
the Lions did there.

Notably, Erin Henderson doesn’t have the ability to do that
because no routes break over the middle. One of the greatest strengths of the
Robber is that it is easy to disguise. The Vikings do not attempt to do that. Because Brandon Pettigrew splits wide, he becomes wide open
against Marvin Mitchell. Harrison Smith can’t offer any help because the four
verticals concept doesn’t give him many choices. He initially breaks to Calvin
Johnson because Josh Robinson is supposed to take away outside routes and
funnel Johnson in, but Mitchell’s ineptitude brings him over. Interestingly, Josh Robinson actually did a very good job
here. Xavier Rhodes took away Kris Durham. The failure of the play falls mostly on Chris Cook for not
reading the receiver enough to turn his head around in time and deflect the
ball. He loses a step despite opening the gate correctly, but the bigger issue
is simply that he didn’t have ball awareness. The next play was a touchdown.

Play #4

Now back to the Bears game.

One thing Brandon Marshall has over Calvin Johnson is a
better ability to use his body to beat press coverage. Both are incredibly
imposing physical specimens, and both use that to their advantage throughout
the process of the route and catch, but Johnson will sometimes use finesse when
crude power will work. Not so for Marshall.

Chris Cook hilariously attempts press coverage and falls
behind. This should theoretically be a strength for Cook's as he has long arms and he's strong. Sanford perhaps sits too long on the seam route (Cover-1
Man) before rolling over to Marshall, where it’s too late, but this is more an
issue of Cook’s failure than it is Sanford, who bears partial
responsibility for the touchdown.

Here are two other plays illustrating the Vikings defensive shortcomings.

The easiest person to blame here would be Jamarca Sanford. That’s
fine and he was terrible. But the most at fault is Marvin Mitchell, who can’t shoot a
gap to save his life and somehow gets blocked out of the A gap by the left
tackle. Kevin Williams isn’t amazing, but neither is he bad. Erin Henderson
locks up the fullback, as per his MIKE responsibilities. The WILL absolutely needs to freelance, navigate through
traffic and shed blocks in order to make plays in the running game. I don’t
know why Mitchell hesitates, but it is a fault. Harrison Smith reads the flow of the run poorly, but he
could not have made a difference either way.

To sum things up, look at what happened most recently.

This is a phenomenally bad playcall. Robinson tracks Smith
across the formation, signaling man coverage, and all the receivers (and Cam
Newton) know that checking to their man beater is the simplest thing to do (if
that was not the original call). Out of a bunch formation, man coverage is
extraordinarily bad, especially in the red zone.

With LaFell and Steve Smith crossing underneath, Harrison
Smith in man coverage on a tight end, Sanford is left to clean up anything that
hits the middle of the end zone. That’s fine; he’s left without a particular
responsibility on this play and may end up having to pick up DeAngelo Williams
out of the backfield. But either Cook or Robinson is going to get burned,
depending on who has to go over the top when covering the crossing routes in
man. Robinson could have closed better as soon as Smith’s outside
shoulder turns to Newton (that gives him about 1.5 seconds) but there’s not
much you can expect him to do. He had an opportunity to limit or restrict the
catch, but only in the loosest definition of the word.

The Vikings defense needs to have an automatic check for
bunch formations at the goal line, and nine times out of 10 it should include
zone coverage; either a box conceptat
the line or a more traditional zone designed to close in on breaking balls. But Robinson was left out in the cold because there wasn’t a
way to respond to the bunch formation like any team rationally would. I’m not
much sold on heavy man coverage concepts in goal line situations anyway, even
with a blitz, because of the issues involving a quarterback draw (especially
with a player like Cam Newton) or other type of outside run cleared by
receivers running routes, but this was spectacularly poor.

So what’s wrong with the Vikings defense? Everything.

There are clear talent issues: Chad Greenway, for whatever
reason (age, passion, surgery, whatever you want) isn’t agile and Henderson
isn’t being played to his strengths. Josh Robinson is clearly a very weak link
in the secondary and Marvin Mitchell is an embarrassment. Jamarca Sanford hasn’t
followed through on his impressive 2012 season, while the defensive line isn’t
getting much pressure, even when aided by blitzes. The coaches are often playing the wrong player, too. There’s
not a rational argument, looking at the film, to play Marvin Mitchell, and it
looks like Josh Robinson is kind of a dumb decision, too. Xavier Rhodes on the
outside is a good decision, but Robinson hasn’t actually been bad on the
outside that often (although you’ll find that hard to believe given the weird
switch concept that burned him for a long touchdown against Carolina). Of his 39
receptions allowed, 31 have been in the slot. He’s a bad slot corner, but alright on the outside. Rhodes
may be a better corner on the outside, but that’s not the issue; the Vikings need a
slot cornerback and they need one badly. Robinson has already proven why it’s
unwise to take an outside corner and fit him inside. The Vikings may as
well see what they have in Marcus Sherels moving forward.

Aside from that, there are often bad plays called. Not as often
as fans would believe as the breakdowns are usually the result of skill and not
scheme, but they do happen from time to time. People like to malign the Tampa-2 defense, but the Vikings
don’t run the Cover-2 or Tampa-2 looks as often as people believe, and the
biggest defensive breakdowns are rarely out of a two-high safety look anyway.

There are schematic issues; the size of the no-cover zones
underneath the hook/curl assignments (underneath zones) are too big and the
landmarks don’t allow linebackers to break to the ball quickly enough
underneath and that could lead to significant issues against the very running
backs that have been plaguing the Vikings the most, but it has also put the
Vikings in a position to create takeaways from the linebackers. The issue is that there are too many points and yards given
up for each takeaway the Vikings grab, and that is a result of talent more
often than not.

At the same time, position coaches and defensive coordinator Alan Williams haven’t
really been providing the support for the players that they need, it seems, to
learn the system, the natural checks and who they can trust in coverage.
Harrison Smith seems more out of place than before and Jamarca Sanford looks to
take worse tackling angles than he did a year previous.

The Vikings also have the worst linebacker corps in the league,
if Pro Football Focus is anything to go by - even if that isn’t strictly true,
it’s true enough. How does that happen when there are two linebacker coaches? It could be a case of too many cooks in the kitchen; Greenway
was excellent in 2010 under Fred Pagac (and then Jeff Imamura after Pagac was
promoted) while Erin Henderson was potentially one of the top outside
linebackers in the league under Mike Singletary. But when the two combined forces as
position coaches, the unit went south quickly.

Clear lines of responsibility, along with clear positional
and schematic control would resolve this problem in all likelihood. There’s not much that can be done to resolve these concerns
this year, but Alan Williams could attempt to change some of the schematic
problems (and perhaps call less Cover-1) to hide the surprising weaknesses of
his unit in the coming weeks. Beyond that, the Vikings need to seriously evaluate Gerald
Hodges and Michael Mauti to see if they are ready to take on the roles that
Marvin Mitchell and Erin Henderson seemingly cannot, given Desmond Bishop’s
injury. Just like Christian Ponder took over for a struggling Donovan McNabb and
didn’t do too poorly given the time he had to learn the offense, the Penn State
linebackers could do the same on defense.

Josh Robinson could lose all of his duties at one position
to devote all of his time to learning the other - either slot or outside corner.
Generally speaking, it seems as if this double duty is killing his ability to
really pick up what he needs to in order to grow into his role and figure out
what he needs to do.

Sometimes there aren’t answers. But that doesn’t mean the
Vikings shouldn’t try. After all, that’s why they went after Josh Freeman, isn’t
it?

Yes, there's nothing like a "death by a thousand cuts" post like this to drive you to drink. There are so many problems, you can't fix them all. I doubt we will see any usage of Mauti or Hodges (who showed very little in the exhibition games anyway) for a while. Frazier and Co. have shown they prefer to put their faith in the veteran knowns (even if that known isn't any good) rather than rookie unknowns. I still feel Robinson could develop into a good player. As Arif points out, he has the skill set that should allow him to be successful. He seemed to start out last year fairly well, but then late in the season he was in Asher Allen territory. Marcus McCauley, Allen and now maybe Robinson - Spielman has not been very slick when he's picked a corner in the 3rd round during his time with the Vikings.

This is awesome, but yes I'm now even more depressed than I was after Sunday. I agree Frazier won't play the rookies and this won't happen, but the Penn State boys should be playing. I would love to see Mauti as the Mike and move Henderson back outside where he wasn't bad. I think he's right on with Robinson as full time slot or put Sherels in there and keep Robinson outside full time. He obviously can't handle double duty. It was good to finally see Bishop in there, injury aside I can't believe it took that long. What does somebody have to do on this team to get benched??? For a head coach and a d coordinator that are supposedly defensive back specialists, I would hope they could coach them up a little better than this.

I give up on Musgrave, I don't even expect any type of competency from his side of the ball. What do you think about the defensive gameplan Sunday? From Seifert: "The Vikings, it should be noted, declined to blitz Newton as much as other opponents this season. He entered the game facing five or more rushers on a league-high 48.6 percent of his dropbacks, but the Vikings sent an extra rusher only 31 percent of the time Sunday." So a guy who has struggled with the blitz gets to stand back there with all the time in the world to pick us apart. Not that we stopped the run either, but damn at least go down swinging.

As for the defensive gameplan for Monday night, I think it should be relatively conservative to start. The Giants running game is not very good and Eli - despite his troubles this season - can throw for big yardage with Nicks, Cruz and now Randle, too. So I think the Vikings rush 4, force Manning to dink and dunk and then they hope penalties and/or poor protection results in bad down and distance situations on 3rd down that even this Vikings defense can't screw up. I think if they get Manning in some of those situations, they will try some blitzing just to see if they can muddy the pocket and force a mistake from him (assuming anybody in that secondary besides Harrison Smith, who might not play because of turf toe, can catch a fucking ball).

Regardless of the strategy, the Giants are going to score some points. The Vikings offense can help by sustaining some long scoring drives themselves. I expect the Giants will be picking up their first win of the season in this game.